HyFLEET:CUTE - Hydrogen for Clean Urban Transport in Europe
Overview
Background & policy context:
In the last few years a series of demonstration projects have taken place that have demonstrated the potential of a transport energy system based on hydrogen. These have seen the development and demonstration of:
- Different hydrogen infrastructures ;
- Fuel cell powered buses and cars; and
- Buses and cars powered by hydrogen internal combustion engines.
As a result, there are some 100 FC and ICE cars, a few FC delivery vans, and between 40 and 45 fuel cell and ICE buses in operation around the world. Most of the buses are in regular public transport and airport trolley service.
The bus projects in particular have provided the developers and the operators with excellent data and experience because the vehicles are generally operated by professional drivers and often under especially hard conditions, such as uninterrupted operation for more than 12 hours under some very harsh, extremes of climatic conditions.
The HyFLEET:CUTE project will see the operation of the world's largest fleet of hydrogen powered buses. It builds on the learning and developments from many of these previous projects.
The HyFLEET:CUTE bus fleet will be supported by a hydrogen infrastructure which will produce, refine, distribute and dispense hydrogen in many different ways.
New advanced prototypes of hydrogen Fuel Cell and Internal Combustion Engine buses will also be developed and trialled.
An advanced hydrogen infrastructure is being established in Berlin which is capable of refuelling a fleet of up to 20 buses. This is aimed to achieve reliability and availability performance as good as current CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) infrastructure, and to be highly energy efficient.
A very active and extensive dissemination and information programme – the Global Hydrogen Bus Platform – combined with the inclusion of Beijing, China, aims to extend the impact of this technology world-wide.
Objectives:
The HyFLEET:CUTE project objectives were to:
- Develop hydrogen powered bus technology in order to reduce the consumption of fuel and energy in the whole transportation system.
- Develop efficient and environmentally 'friendly' ways to produce hydrogen.
- Research the technology and development needs to establish a hydrogen refueling infrastructure.
- Inform the community and key decision-makers about the potential advantages of a hydrogen-based transport system and how they can help to develop it.
Methodology:
The following tasks were undertaken throughout the project:
- operation of 33 hydrogen fuel cell (FC) powered buses in 9 cities around the world, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Perth, Reykjavik;
- operation of 14 hydrogen powered internal combustion engine (ICE) buses in Berlin;
- design, construction and testing of the next generation of fuel cell and internal combustion engine buses;
- development and testing of a new hydrogen refueling infrastructure including an integrated refuelling station with gaseous hydrogen produced from Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and bio DME (Di Methyl Ether produced from biomass) and stationary fuel cells powering the site;
- development, optimization and testing of existing hydrogen infrastructure;
- analysing and predicting public opinion on the risks and advantages of hydrogen and hydrogen powered transport systems.
A range of evaluation studies were carried out. Many of them were based on the assessment framework developed in the former CUTE project. The use of a single coherent assessment framework that integrated all activities of the whole project group would be an important achievement. This arrangement allowed the performance of a wide range of different technologies in the hydrogen infrastructure and the vehicles to be compared. Comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of hydrogen vehicles and infrastructure under 'real life' operational conditions were carried out. This included research into energy efficiencies and environmental impact (Well-to-Tank and Tank-to-Wheel studies) of different hydrogen production pathways and vehicle technology options. The scale and design of the HyFLEET:CUTE project allowed a comprehensive LCA of all advanced hydrogen based public transport technologies currently on the market. Comparisons of the hydrogen ICE and FC buses were conducted in regular route operation. They also were compared with a wide range of other bus technologies. For example they were compared with the LH2 (Liquid hydrogen) hybrid bus running in Berlin. Because the assessment was expected to be carried out under 'real life' operational conditions, it would not suffer from the disadvantage of extrapolating results from test-benches using model drive cycles. This was particularly important as public transport vehicles in inner-city transport were regularly operated in a part-load mode which is very different from most model drive cycles. The evaluation studi
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